The Drifter (8 page)

S
tepping out into the darkened street toward his truck, with the bag of Jimmy’s papers swinging at his side and Mingus ranging ahead, Peter felt the puff of wind on his neck and heard the unmistakable
zhip
of the bullet passing before the flat crack of the gunshots reached him.

It was familiar, the loose rattle of an AK-47, the way the world slowed down while his mind sped up. The granular glow from the few functional streetlights. The damp autumn breeze on his exposed skin. The coppery flavor of adrenaline in his mouth. He didn’t want to like it. But there was something unavoidably delicious about that taste.

Automatically, he turned his head to look for the muzzle flash and saw the man in a Bulls jacket standing beside the open rear door of a sedan stopped at the intersection fifty yards away. The long gun was at his shoulder, but his eye wasn’t down to the sight.

With the crystal clarity of stopped time, Peter thought the guy should be ashamed for missing at that distance. Even with an AK, which was notoriously inaccurate. It was like the early days of the insurgency, deposed Baathists full of the false confidence that
came from running a dictatorship, walking into the street like action heroes, firing from the hip. This was before they learned to hide, and aim, and blow shit up.

The world popped back into motion when the gunman fired again. The AK clattered and a window broke behind Peter. A car alarm howled. Out in the darkness, Mingus started barking like something out of a caveman’s nightmare.

Stepping behind the cover of his truck, Peter couldn’t see the dog, but he didn’t have time to look. The gunman paused, probably changing clips. Peter fished his keys from his coat pocket, opened the passenger door, reached under the seat and found the .45. Shoved the bag of Jimmy’s papers where the gun had been. Mingus kept barking, now from somewhere above him.

Above him? He looked up. Mingus had somehow climbed up on the roof of the truck, sounding like a demon dog.

Then the flat slap of a round punching through forty-year-old truck glass, the asshole shooting Peter’s truck, and the
thunk thunk thunk
of punctured sheet metal right in front of him.

It’s one thing to shoot at a guy and another thing entirely to shoot a guy’s truck. Peter looked at the cracks spiderwebbed around the ragged hole in his window, listened to holes being punched in the mahogany box and the driver’s-side door, the door he’d scoured every junkyard in southern California to find, and how the hell did Mingus get on the roof of the truck?

Peter surely must have pissed off somebody, to get a shooter out here so fast.

Thinking all of this while he strode to the back of the truck and peered around the edge of the mahogany box. Lifted the .45 in a two-handed grip, left forefinger on the trigger. Pistol butt solid in the palm of his right hand, shoulder braced, knees slightly bent.
Arms strong, line up the notch with the reticule, take a breath, exhale, and squeeeeeze.

The gun bucked in his hand. The man with the AK dropped to the blacktop.

The sedan lurched forward, squealing its tires, the rear door slamming closed with the sudden motion. It was an eighties Chevy Impala, jacked up high, with gleaming chrome rims. The light was dim, but Peter just caught the plate number. He put a round through the rear windshield and the rear passenger quarter-panel, aiming for the tire, then held his fire as Mingus leaped off the roof of the truck and hauled ass down the street after the car, a ferocious orange blur disappearing into the night.

The dog had heart, there was no denying it.

Peter walked to the fallen man and kicked the AK away, but it was clear already from the crumpled way he had fallen that the man was dead. Peter rolled the man fully to his back and saw the red hole in the center of his forehead.

Just like a paper target at the firing range.

But paper targets didn’t fall down.

Didn’t erupt in a pool of blood on the cracked asphalt.

Paper targets didn’t die.

He looked around for another car, a spotter, anyone. But there was nobody else. The neighbors had gone to ground, turned out their lights. It wasn’t their first neighborhood shooting.

Peter sighed.

The dead man had dark skin, late teens or early twenties. His face without lines of care or woe.

Peter had never seen him before.

A stranger had tried to kill him.

Just like old times.

Peter found his shell casings in a pothole big enough to swallow
a Honda. He picked up the brass, put the .45 in his coat pocket, and set out after the dog at a fast jog.

He hadn’t known the shooter. Which meant that someone had sent him.

Only two candidates came to mind.

The scarred man in the black SUV. And Lewis.

T
he gun banged against his hip as he ran.

The gun was a problem. In addition to the fact that it was annoying, the ballistics would connect him to the dead man in the Bulls jacket. Peter knew from long experience how slowly the wheels of government turned, and how finely a man could get ground up beneath them.

The white static couldn’t handle Peter getting locked up.

Not for an hour, let alone overnight.

It didn’t matter that he had killed the man in self-defense. The gun wasn’t legal, he had no permit for it. If they didn’t get him for the killing, they’d get him for the gun. And all the while, the man with the scars prowled around Dinah’s house and Lewis’s goons lay awake at night wondering how much money she had.

It wasn’t just the white static.

Peter had shit to do.

Someone had sent that kid with the AK. Peter needed to know who.

Five blocks from the shooting, he ducked down an alley to eject the remaining rounds, wiping his fingerprints from each with his shirttail, then dropping them through the sewer grate.

On the next block he did the same with the clip, and on the next block, the slide, and on the block after that, the frame.

He stopped to wet his hands with the dew on an unmowed lawn, and rubbed them together to help clean off the gunshot residue. He didn’t know if it would help if they wanted to test him, but maybe it would. He shook off the water and wiped them dry on his socks. He’d worn those socks for three days now. He wasn’t worried about gunshot residue.

He ran for another hour, looking for a big ugly orange dog. His breath came easily as he methodically quartered the neighborhood, waving coolly at the patrol cars when they roared by. They didn’t stop to ask him questions.

He didn’t find Mingus. He tried not to worry about the dog. He told himself Mingus was the kind of animal who could find his way home.

He was more worried about the Chevy Impala sedan with bullet holes in the rear windshield and quarter-panel.

And the black SUV driven by a man with scars on his cheeks.

And Lewis and Nino and Ray.

And Dinah, with a man watching her house, and four hundred thousand dollars in a paper bag tied up with string.

Peter really didn’t want to get locked up.

But if he went back to his truck, maybe he could learn something.

—

The police had set up a perimeter. Yellow plastic tape stretched around trees and lampposts and knockdown sawhorses. It contained the dead shooter, the intersection, and part of Jimmy’s street with half a dozen shot-up cars and Peter’s perforated truck.

Uniformed policemen and other crime-scene people wandered
around in the weird glare of portable lights. A few neighborhood onlookers stood in whispering knots on the sidewalk.

Peter stopped at the tape.
CRIME SCENE, DO NOT CROSS
.

When a police officer came up to see what he wanted, Peter nodded at his pickup. “That’s my truck.”

The cop was older than Peter, with arms like bridge cables and a face made of stone. He asked for Peter’s ID. “My wallet’s in the glove box,” said Peter. “Or it was before some asshole broke my window.”

The cop nodded. “Wait for the detective.”

“What happened?” asked Peter. “Somebody get hurt?”

The cop’s face didn’t change. “Wait for the detective.”

Peter waited while the cop went to a group of men standing around the body. Uniformed cops paced around, eyes down, examining the ground.

After ten minutes, a tall, narrow guy in a tall, narrow suit under a long, dark coat came up to the tape line. In his late forties, he had the measured stride of a marathoner and the distant stare of a sniper. He opened a notebook, licked the tip of a pencil, and looked at Peter like he knew every time Peter had crossed against the light.

It was a little disconcerting. The white static fizzed down low.

“Name.”

Peter told him. The detective didn’t write it down.

“Address.”

Peter gave the man his parents’ house up north, although he hadn’t been back since he mustered out. The detective didn’t look surprised. It was the same address on the driver’s license. He didn’t write that down, either.

“Phone?”

“I don’t have one.”

That raised his eyebrows. “You don’t have one?”

Peter shook his head. Although he was thinking he should get one. One of those smartphones, if he could get one without a credit card. He didn’t have a credit card, either. Neither one had mattered when he was up in the mountains.

“What’s your business here?”

Peter had the answer ready. “I was working on a friend’s house a few blocks away. I finished for the day, was headed to Speed Queen for barbecue, and stopped to let my dog out. He took off after something. I went after him.”

“You stopped in this neighborhood? To let your dog out?” The detective wasn’t buying it.

“I’m not from around here,” said Peter. “It didn’t look so bad compared to where I’ve been.”

The detective’s eyes were a mild gray in the crime-scene lights, and utterly without illusions. “I bet,” he said. “So where’s the dog?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “I never found him. But I did see a black Ford SUV chasing a Chevy Impala going north on Twentieth about an hour ago, going really fast. The Ford almost ran me over. I got the license plates.”

The detective raised his eyebrows, an understated disbelieving will-wonders-never-cease? kind of look. “Oh, really.”

Peter gave him the plate numbers from the Impala and the black SUV that had followed him from Dinah’s house.

The detective licked his pencil again, and this time he wrote down the numbers. And some other things, too, because he kept writing.

Peter said, “You mind my asking what happened?”

“Shoot-out in the big city,” said the tall detective, pencil still moving on his notebook. He tilted his head toward the man Peter had killed, who had tried to kill him. “Young man over there, now
deceased. Appeared to be armed with an AK-47. Probably not on his way to church.”

He closed the notebook and tucked it into his jacket pocket, lifted the yellow tape. “C’mon in,” he said. Then strolled through the crime scene like it was his backyard. Peter walked beside him.

“Guy hosed down half the block,” said the detective. “Most of two clips, fifty or sixty rounds. Really a fine American. Didn’t hit any people I know of yet, although the night is young. Put a bunch of holes in cars and houses. Most of those holes in your truck, unfortunately,” he said, pointing at it with his chin. But he stopped short of the pickup, beside a patrol car parked blocking the street.

“No official suspects on the killer. Whoever did it drilled him dead center, right in the forehead. Single shot. That’s marksmanship.”

Then the tall detective opened the rear door of the patrol car.

“Get inside,” he said.

“What for?” asked Peter, keeping his voice mild although the static sparked inside him. His heart thumped harder in his chest. Goddamn it. “I wasn’t here. I just want to get my truck and find my dog, and get some dinner. I’ve been working all day. I’m hungry.”

“I’m not taking you in,” said the detective. “I’m just going to run your record.”

“Because I parked on the wrong block?”

“Because, looking at you, I’m guessing you’re a vet.”

“I’m a carpenter.”

The detective gave him a look. “Don’t be an asshole. You were over there. Am I right?”

Reluctantly, Peter nodded. “Marines. Recon.”

The detective filed it away. “Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Both,” said Peter.

“Welcome home, son,” said the detective, not unkindly. “But
you’re the only guy I’ve got with practice shooting at people. So get in the car.”

“Goddamn it, I’m trying to be helpful,” said Peter.

“So you say,” said the detective. “So keep being helpful. Get in the fucking car before I have four cops put you in. With handcuffs.”

Peter felt his muscles tense, his pulse rising. He turned and bent and sat, leaving his legs out. It was awkward. The plastic seats were formed to fit a person with his hands cuffed behind him. He could still hear the wind in the trees. It helped, a little. But the back of a police car was just one step removed from a holding cell. And the white static didn’t like it.

He shifted on the seat, heart going hard, knee bobbing faster as his interior metronome went into overdrive. The tall detective was looking at him. Peter’s shoulders rose and his neck tightened up. An error in judgment. He should have kept going. He should have come back tomorrow. The space got smaller around him. He took deep breaths, in and out, in and out, trying to keep the oxygen moving. The headache would come soon.

The detective leaned on the open door. “You okay there, pal?”

Peter shook his head. “I’m really hungry,” he said. “My blood sugar gets low.”

The detective eyed him skeptically. “Uh-huh. Listen, when they go through your truck, are they going to find anything? Weapons? Drugs? Pills? Needles? I don’t care about a little weed, because, hey, it’s practically medicine now. But anything else, you better tell me, because they’re going to find it.”

The detective leaned over him and Peter felt the disadvantage. Which was why the detective did it. The white static was just a fringe benefit. But the police were unlikely to find where he’d hidden the plastic explosive without putting the truck up on a lift.

“No,” he said. “No drugs. Just tools. Some food, camping gear.” He was glad he had gotten rid of the gun.

“So,” said the detective. “You’re living out of your truck.” But he seemed sympathetic.

Peter really didn’t want to have this conversation. But it was manifestly true, down to the sleeping bag and coffeepot. And it put Peter in a certain category for the man. Maybe that would be helpful.

So he nodded. “Just for a few days,” he said.

“The address on your driver’s license: that’s your parents’ house, right?”

Peter nodded again.

“So why aren’t you there? Why are you here, living out of your truck?”

“I’m working,” said Peter. “Helping out a friend. I don’t have a lot of money.”

The detective’s gray eyes looked right through him.

“You get panic attacks? Nightmares, maybe? Or it takes a pint of bourbon to get to sleep?”

“I sleep fine,” said Peter. Which was true, as long as he could see the sky before he closed his eyes. And hear the wind in the trees. Goddamn it. He kept breathing. Maybe it was getting easier.

The detective’s face softened a little. “The VA’s just a few miles from here. They have some pretty good people. Sometimes it just helps to talk.”

Peter opened his mouth and closed it again. How had this cop put him so off-balance?

“No offense,” he said, looking up at the detective, “but you don’t look like my mother. So what the fuck is it to you?”

The tall detective’s face was carefully calm. “Let’s just say I’ve
had my share of nightmares.” He stuck out his hand. “Sam Lipsky. Rangers, Somalia ’89, Iraq ’91.”

The Rangers were the Army equivalent of the Marines’ Force Recon, Peter’s group. Somalia was an ugly little war. Mogadishu warlords shot down a Black Hawk helicopter, dropping Rangers in the middle of a hostile city. Then the rescue went bad.

Peter shook the detective’s hand. It was lean and hard, like the man.

“So tell me,” said Lipsky. His eyes like X-rays, looking under the skin. “Do I gotta worry about you? Like that poor schmuck shot up that recruiting office last week?”

Peter shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s not me.”

“You’re not pissed off, frustrated, unemployed, maybe got something going that’s not quite legal?”

“All of that, yeah, except the last one.” Peter spread his hands. They were shaking slightly. “Listen, I’m really starving. Can I get something to eat?”

“Sorry. Not yet.” Detective Sam Lipsky pinned Peter with a glance. “Sit tight. I’ll leave the door open. You’re not going anywhere just yet. Better give me the keys to your camper, or we’ll just pry off the lock.”